FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FROM
THE SAN FRANCISCO MEDICAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION
BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION CALLS FOR LABELING OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD.

Britain's premier medical association yesterday joined the European fracas over genetically
engineered foods by saying that foods harboring new genes should be labeled as such
so consumers can choose to avoid them until they're proven safe.

In a strongly worded report that immediately increased trade tensions with the
United States, the British Medical Association also called for gene-altered crops
to be processed separately from conventional crops, rather than mixed together as
is done today in the United States, so that any health effects that may eventually
turn up will be traceable to the products that caused them.

If growers in the United States or other countries continue to refuse to segregate
gene-modified products, the association concluded, then Britain should consider banning
imports of those foods.

The recommendations prompted a quick negative reaction on Capitol Hill, where
congressional leaders have been growing increasingly irritated with Europe's resistance
to agricultural biotechnology, a lucrative field dominated by the United States.

Just four days ago a bipartisan group of 36 senators sent a letter to President
Clinton urging him to stand up for American agricultural biotechnology at the World
Trade Organization and other international forums, including the upcoming G8 summit,
to avoid "a looming trade conflict" with Europe.

The 119,000-member British Medical Association represents more than 80 percent
of Britain's doctors. It has weighed in before on the issue of genetically engineered
crops and foods, but yesterday's report--based on an analysis of current scientific
knowledge--contains the strongest warnings yet as to what remains unknown about their
environmental and health effects.

The crops contain genes from bacteria and other organisms to make them resistant
to weed-killing chemicals and insects. They are being grown on millions of acres
in the United States, where regulatory agencies have deemed them safe, but they remain
heavily restricted in Europe, where public acceptance has been low.

Concerns about genetically engineered corn have already halted virtually all corn
exports from the United States to Europe, costing U.S. farmers about $200 million
a year. Exports of American engineered soy worth additional hundreds of millions
of dollars are so far being accepted by Europe.

The British report does not assert that engineered foods are dangerous. But it
counsels that without proof of safety, the wise course is to proceed more slowly.
For example, the new report says, no one knows yet whether the antibiotic resistance
genes used to create engineered crops might get passed to bacteria in people's internal
organs, leading to the growth of drug-resistant pathogens. Just in case, the group
calls upon companies to abandon use of those genes.

That conservative approach contrasts sharply with the Food and Drug Administration's,
which has allowed companies to use such genes after a review of the scientific literature
concluded that it was unlikely--albeit not impossible--for such problematic gene
transfers to occur.

The FDA and other U.S. agencies have made it their policy not to regulate engineered
crops or foods differently than conventionally bred products. "We do not have
any information that the use of recombinant DNA techniques creates a class of products
different in quality or safety," said Jim Maryanski, the FDA's biotechnology
coordinator. By Rick Weiss, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, May 18, 1999;
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